


It Goes Both Ways

by mosylu



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Jyn on the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 16:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Isolated and with stormtroopers searching for her, with only about an hour before nightly inspections, Jyn knows it wouldn't make any sense for her to sneak across the city so she can meet Cassian and Kay at their ship. It would be far safer for everyone concerned if she lets them go without her and stays where she is until the heat dies down. She can sneak off-planet and make her way back to the Rebellion on her own.So . . . she's going to stay put, right?





	It Goes Both Ways

**Author's Note:**

> For Rebelcaptain Appreciation Week's first prompt, "Trust"
> 
> Quantagram and Gravity shamelessly stolen from skitzofreak's works, because I love the idea of galactic social media and how the Rebellion might use it to undermine the evil Empire.

Jyn scrambled around a corner into an alley and fetched up against the wall behind some piled crates, panting for breath.  "Oh, no,“ she mocked herself in a savage undertone.  "No problem with me gathering extra intel, Cassian. It’s been years, Cassian. Nobody remembers me, Cassian. Kriff!”

This was what happened when the owner of your one-time favorite seedy dive bar got married and popped out a couple of kids. She went and got _respectable._

In this case, respectable meaning an utter fucking coward who’d look at you apologetically when the troopers’ boots thudded rhythmically outside and say, “Sorry, Tanith. I’ve got a family.”

“Right, yeah, a _family,_ ” she sneered at the rat that poked its nose out of the pile of crates. “Like the Empire’s going to care about your _family._ ”

The rat had nothing to contribute. It skittered off on its ratly business instead.

She let out her breath. It wasn’t doing her any good, sitting here grousing about Lorazi’s perfidy. It had been her own fault, going in there thinking all would be hunky-dory, and then staying there even when she’d realized that things had gotten gussied up a bit in the Tooka’s Tail. She knew what happened when people didn’t think they had any choice but to shelter under the Empire’s fickle goodwill.

She rested her head back against the brick and listened. No _thwat-thwat-thwat_ of marching trooper boots. She was all right for now. But her face would have gone out over the airwaves. Let the wrong person see her and she’d be in Wobani again, or worse.

She pulled her scarf forward, wishing that it looked like rain so she’d have an excuse to be all wrapped up. Damn.

She checked her chrono and moaned.

“The spaceport locks down for an hour at sunset,” she’d told Cassian. “Inspections.”

Cassian had said, “We’ll be gone by then.”

They would, but she’d still be here. The spaceport was on the southern edge of the city and the sun was already sliding sullenly toward the horizon. It would be a karking miracle if she got there in time.

They’d wait until they couldn’t anymore, and then they’d go. And they should.

Her secure comm had gotten cracked in two in the fight at the Tooka’s Tail, and it had spit sparks and static until she’d yanked it out and crushed it underfoot, then kicked the two pieces into the river so it couldn’t somehow be repaired and the signal traced back to Cassian and Kay.

So no way to get ahold of them, or vice versa.

She chewed her lip.

Right. Where was she?

She risked standing up and peering out the end of the alleyway. She wasn’t too far from the Dong, a local architectural oddity big enough to be a landmark anywhere in town. The river was a couple of blocks behind her.

If the area hadn’t gotten gentrified - and her nose told her it hadn’t - there should be a no-tell motel about one block north. A few credits would get her a room for the night, and a good amount more should induce convenient amnesia in the desk clerk.

Right. Okay. That was a workable plan, even with the risk of getting sold out again. She’d hole up, slice a secure connection to the holonet, drop a line on Quantagram or Gravity that would let Cassian know she was all right and she’d find her own way back to the Rebellion.

A far more workable plan than trying to get to the spaceport in the next half an hour, through a city full of troopers who were looking for her face, to a landing pad that might very well be empty by the time she got there.

It should be empty by the time she got there. If they knew what was good for them.

She breathed.

Thought of Cassian’s face when he’d said, “See you later,” as he set off on his own way through the city.

Breathed again.

Thought of Kay grumbling, “I will be right here” as he slouched in the cockpit.

Breathed.

Thought of Bodhi’s face when Cassian and Kay got back without her.

Said, “Kriff,” one more time, savagely. 

She wrapped the scarf around the lower part of her face and cut the rest of the way down the alley, running south as hard as she could.

* * *

She couldn’t risk public transport, not with the ident scanners everywhere. She could, and did, risk a couple of piratas. But the unlicensed taxi drivers were just as vulnerable as the owner of the Tooka’s Tail to Imperial bullyboys, so she only took the first into the business district and then hopped out, fingers pressed to her ear and saying, “Yes, sir, right away sir,” to her nonexistent comm as she strode off down the sidewalk.

When she heard the bleedle-blurp of a trooper’s comm around a corner, she turned on her heel and leapt onto a tour bus. She endured ten minutes of yammering about the Dong - “an architectural marvel with, heh-heh, a rather cheeky nickname amongst the simple locals” - before hopping off again, walking a block, and hailing the second pirata.

That one took her most of the way to the spaceport. She tried not to nervously tug at her scarf every time she saw an Imperial speeder zip past, or a white cluster of troopers on the sidewalk.

In between those tense moments, she watched the sun sag toward the horizon and the last ships of the day taking off toward space. She told herself that Cassian and Kay were one of those black specks against the brilliant colors of sunset and this was a fool’s errand she was on.

But when she scrambled out of the second pirata, she took off for the spaceport at a run, clutching her scarf to her face, losing herself in crowds as much as possible. They were checking idents at the front gate, and she cursed into the folds of material and ducked off down a side street.

_Give up, give up,_ she told herself, hunched over the lock on a side door. _If they catch you slicing your way in through a maintenance entrance, they won’t even bother arresting you, they’ll just fry you._

Over the loudspeakers, a voice boomed out the ten-minute warning before the nightly closure.

She worked at the lock, expecting any moment to hear a trooper-helmeted voice yell, “You there!” or the _zot-zot_ of weapons.

The lock beeped, turned green, and she slid through the door, kicking it shut behind her and bolting for landing pad E-781.

_It will be empty,_ she told herself, _and you’re going to have to slice your way out again and find some seedy spaceport bar to sleep in for the night, or some seedy smuggler to haul your idiot carcass off this rock._

“Five minutes,” the loudspeaker voice said in Core-accented Basic, and then again in a couple of the languages that the Empire graciously deigned to recognize.

Jyn cursed under her breath in a few languages that the Empire didn’t officially recognize, although if you said that to a trooper they’d know to get pissed off, all right. She turned the corner, preparing herself to see a locked door and a VACANT sign lit up next to it -

And saw Cassian leaning in the open doorway, looking off in the other direction, chewing a toothpick as if he didn’t have less than four minutes to get out of here before inspections.

Her foot scraped the plascrete, and his head snapped around. He looked her up and down, quick and all-encompassing.

His shoulders softened, and she realized in that moment that he’d been holding tension in them. Holding it Cassian style, invisibly, casually, so you barely noticed it was there until it was gone.

He said into the comm in his hand, “Kay, she’s here. Let’s go,” and strode into the landing pad.

She followed him up the gangplank but collapsed in the passenger seating while he continued up to the cockpit. Kay’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “You are _very late,_ Jyn Erso.”

“Yeah, all right,” she mumbled, scooting along the bench until she could pull crash webbing over her shoulders.

“You were also out of contact for most of an hour. It was very annoying.”

“I heard you,” she shouted toward the cockpit and slouched as much as the crash webbing would allow.

The ship jolted, tilted, lifted. Gravity dragged at her for a moment until the artificial cut in. She rested her head back against the headrest and let her heart rate slow, her breathing even out. She was sweating and her scarf was crammed up under her ear and she was starving but -

They’d waited.

She didn’t know what to feel about that.

She sat there alone, dragging her scarf free of her neck and her hair, until the final jolt of the ship jumping to hyperspeed. Then she undid the crash webbing. She hated being caged in like that.

Cassian came out of the cockpit, over to the passenger seat, and sat down next to her.

She almost said his name - _you waited, why did you wait, why didn’t you say anything_ \- and then his arm came around her shoulders. He pulled her in close to his side, pressed his nose to her temple, and let out a long, slow sigh.

His grip was so tight it almost hurt. Some buckle or gadget in a pocket was trying to dig a hole in her ribs. She settled her hand on his chest and rested her chin on his shoulder.

His heart thumped once, twice, three times under her palm before he said, “An alert went out for Tanith Ponta at the - Tooka’s Butt?”

She snorted into his jacket. “Tooka’s Tail. Shitty place. Less shitty than before; should have been my first clue.” She looked up. “How did you know?”

“Kay,” he said. “Was monitoring our aliases from here.”

“Right,” she said. “So you caught wind.”

“Mmm. Your comm was out.”

“Casualty of leaving the Tooka’s Tail.”

“Ah.”

“It’s in the river.”

“Quartermaster won’t like that,” he observed. “It was … unnerving.”

“I suppose people spotted me on my way across the city,” she said. “And Kay heard it.”

A long pause. Then he said, “No.”

She frowned at him. “You didn’t know I was on my way?”

“Nobody reported you captured either,” he said. “You were a long way away.”

“Mmm.”

“You should have stayed there. Sheltered in place.”

“You should have left,” she retorted.

“And have you find an empty landing pad?” he said.

She thought of how that would have been, and burrowed into his side a little more.

Whirs and thuds announced Kay’s presence. He stood over them, somehow scowling without a mobile face. “You are late.”

“I know,” she said.

“Cassian was very concerned.”

“I wasn’t until he commed me,” Cassian murmured into her ear. “Four times in the space of ten minutes.”

If Kay heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it. “He refused to leave. That is against protocol. I told him that the odds you would stay on this planet until the attention died down, and make your own way back, were very high. I also told him that would be a foolish thing. But you have done foolish things before. Often.”

She looked up, up, up at him. “Thanks for staying.”

His eyes flickered. He turned and stomped away.

Cassian smiled against her hair and said, “Thanks for coming back.”

She yawned and rested her head on his shoulder. He’d stayed, she’d come back, and that was a kind of reciprocal trust she hadn’t had since Saw had left her on Tamsye Prime. The feeling sat in her heart, smooth and polished, and she wanted to keep running her fingers over it like a precious gem.

“Cassian?”

“Mmm.”

She tilted her head up to give him a crooked smile. “I could _murder_ a nutrient bar.”

FINIS


End file.
